Background
Mary Pickford was born Gladys Louise Smith on April 8, 1892 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Mary Pickford was born Gladys Louise Smith on April 8, 1892 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
When in the early 1900s, her family owned a theatre in a family enterprise, Gladys, her mother and two younger siblings toured the United States by rail, performing in third-rate companies and plays. After six impoverished years, Pickford allowed one more summer to land a leading role on Broadway, planning to quit acting if she failed. Gladys finally landed a supporting role in a 1907 Broadway play, The Warrens of Virginia. David Belasco, the producer of the play, insisted that Gladys Smith assume the stage name Mary Pickford. After completing the Broadway run and touring the play, however, Pickford was again out of work.
In 1909 she was tested by D. W. Griffith (the Biograph Company director) at the company's New York studio for a role in the nickelodeon film, Pippa Passes. The role went to someone else but Griffith was immediately taken with Pickford. She quickly grasped that movie acting was simpler than the stylized stage acting of the day. Most actors earned $5 a day but, after Pickford's single day in the studio, Griffith agreed to pay her $10 a day against a guarantee of $40 a week. She appeared in 51 films in 1909 – almost one a week.
In January 1910, Pickford traveled with a Biograph crew to Los Angeles. Many other film companies wintered on the West Coast, escaping the weak light and short days that hampered winter shooting in the East.
She starred in films at Carl Laemmle's Independent Moving Pictures Company (IMP) in 1911. IMP was absorbed into Universal Pictures in 1912, along with Majestic. Unhappy with their creative standards, Pickford returned to work with Griffith in 1912. Some of her best performances were in his films, such as Friends, The Mender of Nets. That year Pickford also introduced Dorothy and Lillian Gish (both friends from her days in touring melodrama) to Griffith. Both became major silent stars, in comedy and tragedy, respectively. Pickford made her last Biograph picture, The New York Hat, in late 1912.
She returned to Broadway in the David Belasco production of A Good Little Devil (1912). This was a major turning point in her career. Pickford, who had always hoped to conquer the Broadway stage, discovered how deeply she missed film acting. In 1913, she decided to work exclusively in film. The previous year, Adolph Zukor had formed Famous Players in Famous Plays. It was later known as Famous Players-Lasky and then Paramount Pictures, one of the first American feature film companies. Pickford left the stage to join Zukor's roster of stars. Zukor first filmed Pickford in a silent version of A Good Little Devil. The film, produced in 1913, showed the play's Broadway actors reciting every line of dialogue, resulting in a stiff film that Pickford later called "one of the worst I ever made ... it was deadly". Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, Pickford was believed to be the most famous woman in the world. Pickford starred in 52 features throughout her career.
On June 24, 1916, Pickford signed a new contract with Zukor that granted her full authority over production of the films in which she starred, and a record-breaking salary of $10,000 a week. In addition, Pickford's compensation was half of a film's profits, with a guarantee of $1,040,000 (US$ 17,330,000 in 2017). Occasionally, she played a child, in films such as The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917). Pickford's fans were devoted to these "little girl" roles, but they were not typical of her career.
Pickford proved to be a worthy businesswoman who took control of her career in a cutthroat industry. During World War I, she promoted the sale of Liberty Bonds, making an intensive series of fund-raising speeches that kicked off in Washington. Though Canadian-born, she was a powerful symbol of Americana, kissing the American flag for cameras and auctioning one of her world-famous curls for $15,000.
Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks produced and shot their films after 1920 at the jointly owned Pickford-Fairbanks studio on Santa Monica Boulevard. The producers who signed with UA were true independents, producing, creating and controlling their work to an unprecedented degree. By 1930, Pickford's acting career had largely faded. After retiring three years later, however, she continued to produce films for United Artists.
On May 29, 1979, Pickford died at a Santa Monica, California, United States.
Mary Pickford's mother baptized her children as Methodists, the faith of their father.
Pickford's relationship with her children was tense. Both her children later said their mother was too self-absorbed to provide real maternal love.
Mary Pickford was married three times. She married Owen Moore, an Irish-born silent film actor, on January 7, 1911. It is rumored she became pregnant by Moore in the early 1910s and had a miscarriage or an abortion. Some accounts suggest this resulted in her later inability to have children. The couple had numerous marital problems, notably Moore's alcoholism, insecurity about living in the shadow of Pickford's fame, and bouts of domestic violence. The couple lived together on-and-off for several years.
Mary Pickford became secretly involved in a relationship with Douglas Fairbanks. They toured the U.S. together in 1918 to promote Liberty Bond sales for the World War I effort. She divorced Moore on March 2, 1920, after she agreed to his $100,000 demand for a settlement.
Mary Pickford married Fairbanks just days later on March 28, 1920. They went to Europe for their honeymoon, fans in London and in Paris caused riots trying to get to the famous couple. The couple's triumphant return to Hollywood was witnessed by vast crowds who turned out to hail them at railway stations across the United States. When Fairbanks' romance with Sylvia, Lady Ashley became public in the early 1930s, he and Mary Pickford separated. They divorced January 10, 1936.
On June 24, 1937, she married her third and last husband, actor and band leader Buddy Rogers. They adopted two children: Roxanne (born 1944, adopted 1944) and Ronald Charles (born 1937).